Still Human
by Spirit Adept
Summary: Battling dragons, figthing demons, evading death, all in a day's work for our favorite adepts. But everyone has some sort of fear and deep down, Isaac and friends just happen to be ordinary people with ordinary fears.


**Still Human**

Garet's Monster

I like sleep. No, I _love _sleep. It's good for you in so many different ways. You get to recharge your psynergy, lets your body fix itself, you get to watch some of the most incredible and strangest things in your sleep... the list goes on and on. With sleep being so important and all it should be illegal to wake up early in the morning. But no, there's always something that needs to be done early in the morning, something that requires me to do it.

...Except today.

Today i got to sleep in till noon, something my family and friends only let me do as often as the Golden Sun rises, which isn't very often. I can't even remember the last time I slept in. This happens only if ever single person in my life has something they need to do, and I do mean _everybody_. This was confirmed by the stack of notes left on the kitchen counter which told the whereabouts of various members of my family and the many messages left by my friends about what they were doing.

I had the house all to myself, so you know what that means. There would be no annoying sister bossing me around, no hyperactive brother jumping up and down, no stories of the good old days from the grandparents, no task my parents need me to do, no pranks from certain friends of mine. Just total peace, quiet, and privacy. I could sit on the couch in my boxers eating cake for breakfast and no one would see or care.

So that is exactly what I did.

The next half hour of my life was dedicated to reclining on the living room couch and devouring a slice of cake my mom baked for us as desert yesterday, during all of this I didn't bother to finish getting dressed. Life was good.

But alas, all good things must come to an end. After finishing off the slice I knew the longer I laid there, the greater the risk someone would walked in and see me. So after savoring my final moments of being king of the house, I dragged myself back up to my room and got dressed. It was then I remembered I actually did have something I had to do today, something very important

I needed to get supplies so I could cook a romantic dinner for Mia and I. I was to cook the main course and she would make the desert, both of which we would get to eat at _her _house, behind a closed door, away from all distractions of the world. There is only one thing I like more than peace and quiet, and that is peace and quiet with Mia. And if I was lucky, maybe eating dinner wouldn't be the only thing I would get to do with her tonight...

Of course, that's just wishful thinking. I always joke around with her about this subject and she always responds "Not unless we get married". Although as of lately I've caught her saying "Not **_until _**we get married". I wonder if it's just a slip of the tongue or if Mia's hinting something. Hmm...

Don't have time to try and figure out women now, I have to try to find the best piece of stake in Vale and herbs to flavor it with. So I filled up my wallet, put on my boots, and opened the door.

And that's when I saw **_It_**...

**_It_** was the biggest, ugliest, most repulsive spider that I ever had the misfortune of getting within a foot of. Okay so I've been closer to bigger and worse spiders before but those ones you can take your sword and cleave in half. This one was about the size of a walnut, too small to attack with a sword, too big to crush with your hands, but just the right size to scare anyone that get in its face.

Kinda like me.

So after getting over the initial shock of seeing such a monster, I fell to the floor in a very ungraceful and undignified manner and crawled away. All it did was stay there, suspended in the doorway by and invisible line of webbing, blocking my exit from the house. "Dammit" was all I could mutter as I tried to figure out a way to get past it.

It just had to be a spider, the one creature in this world I feared above all else. The goddesses couldn't have put any other monster in my doorway today, no it had to be a spider. I would rather face a skeleton before I faced one of these things, skeletons are not the most stable monsters. Or a big armored thing, I could just outrun that. Hell I'd like to see Karst and Agatio out there instead of a spider, I'd like a little revenge for the Jupiter Lighthouse trap anyways.

My thoughts returned to figuring out a way past that spider. I could try a little fireball on it, of course then I run the risk of setting the house on fire. We do have a 'No fire psynergy in the house' rule for a reason. I don't think I could sneak under either, it would get caught in my hair (curse my awesome hair style). Wait a sec, Dad keeps a bottle of poison for making traps for mice under the kitchen sink. That stuff will peel the skin off your hands, it should be enough for that little SOB in my way. I walked into the kitchen and sure enough, the green bottle with a skull on it was right where it should be. I took the whole bottle back to the spider, opened the top, and drenched it with the foul liquid. "Take that!" I shouted at it with a smug smile on my face. A spider dying of poison, how ironic.

Now all that was left was to wait for it to fall down and shrivel up. So I waited, and waited, and waited, but it still hung their. Hmm, I guess it just died so fast it didn't have time to shrivel up. So I moved over to the doorway and proceeded to remove the spider.

That's when it hissed at me.

I jumped back when I heard the sound. The little bugger was still alive! And that hiss, that was no ordinary hiss. It wasn't like a cat's "I'm-going-to-claw-your-face-off-now" hiss or a snake's "I'm-going-to-bite-you-and-oh-yes-I'm-poisonous" hiss. No this was a "I'm-going-to-steal-your-soul-and-take-over-the-world-so-bow-before-your-new-lord-and-master" hiss. Nobody, but **nobody** hisses at me like that and gets away with it. I ran upstairs again and pulled out my Fire Brand. Maybe it _wasn't _too small to use a sword on.

I jumped down the stairs and approached the spider for one final confrontation. "You're going down ya little bastard!" I screamed as I lunged at the beast. But it was too fast for me and dropped down before I hit it. I still connected with the web it was on though and sent the spider to the ground. Immediately it tried to grab the upper hand by closing in on me.

Big mistake.

I lifted my weapon above my head and yelled "You're not taking my soul today!". Then with one supreme heave, I brought the broad side of the sword down on the spider and crushed it.

Or so I though. I lifted my sword up only to find that I had stunned it. Damn, this was one powerful spider.

As I watched it twitch I suddenly realized something. It was stuck, I'm still bigger, and this monster would fit perfectly under the heel of my boot. A smile crept over my face as I put down the Fire Brand and walked up to it. The spider twitched desperately in an attempt to escape its death, but it was inevitable.

I held my boot over it and thought of the perfect final words this thing would ever hear.

"Give my regards to Alex, in **_Hell_**!"

_**CRUNCH!**_

I find the sound to be very satisfying as I grind the heel of my boot against its disgusting exoskeleton. The battle was finally over, and I was triumphant. I marched out the door, _my_ door, gleaming with success. I didn't care that there was half a spider smashed in my house that someone would force me to clean up later. It didn't bother me that there was a group of people that witnessed this all from the moment I opened the door. I wasn't fazed in the least when I realized that the other half of the spider was on the bottom of my boot. No, all that matter was that there were ingredients that need to be bought, a dinner that needed to be cooked, and a girl that needed to be serenade.


End file.
